Journey to a Fairy-Tale Kingdom

Once upon a time, there was an old tobacco factory in Rovinj. It supplied the Austro-Hungarian army with their favourite cigars. A hundred years later, two princes rode by and discovered this beautiful, but decayed space. The sight was so heart-breaking for them that they immediately decided to revive its beauty and make it useful. Soon they realised what the kingdom was lacking. It was definitely a great place for a good party, networking and trend discovering!

In 2008, 1,300 noblemen came to visit the first event organised by the founders Tomo Ricov and Boris Kovaček at the revived place in Rovinj. They named it the Weekend Media Festival and it turned out to be a stunner!

This year’s Weekend Media Festival repeated the successful story of combining business and pleasure, but the number of visitors has increased to the impressive 4000. Lecturers from all over the world came to tell the visitors about the newest market changes as well as the business opportunities and social media trends. The event was opened by the knight Nicolas Kfuri who received praise for his lecture about the changes social media brought to marketing. The kingdom of Nestlé sent their knight Tom Buday, and his lecture about the consumer engagement in the digital world was widely accepted.

Interesting faces and names provided the visitors with refreshing themes while well-known classic fairy-tale characters strolled up and down the Weekend place.

No visitor could walk by without noticing the lovely Snow Whites adorning the event.

There were also the favourite dwarfs to be seen:

Sleepy

Photo by foto@novkovic

Grumpy

Photo by Petar Galebov/PIXSELL

Bashful

Photo by Borna Filic/PIXSELL

Happy

Photo by Borna Filic/PIXSELL

Sneezy

Photo by Jurica Galoic/PIXSELL

Doc

Photo by foto@novkovic

Dopey (on the left)

Photo by foto@novkovic

The princes who ruled the whole event showed their power by bewitching the crowd in no time:

Tomo Ricov (his impeccable talent for music shook the party lads and gals who seemed glued to the dance floor)

It sure wouldn’t be a fairy-tale without a competition for proud knights. SoMo Fighter attracted many of them to fight for the crown in the realm of social media. The most impressive achievement was presented by the Serbian agency Webtise which won the viral blockbuster award. Their You Tube video “Wedding” about the last year’s LGBT pride parade in Belgrade reached over 200,000 views in only two days and became a hot Facebook and Twitter topic.

As you know, every fairy-tale has its own evil witch. But it was difficult to find one at the Weekend Media Festival. But just when I thought that I won’t have any and that I’m going to have to give up on the story, I reached into my pocket and voilà, there it was! My pocket was empty and it dawned on me that the evil witch had taken it all! The meals and drinks on the energizing days in Rovinj were quite costly. Was it worth it? Absolutely! I’ll give the evil witch another chance to win her share same time next year.